Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, near the border with Tajikistan. Deadly avalanches are common in the area in winter. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Rescuers are shovelling through deep snow searching for victims of an avalanche that destroyed a village of 200 people in north-eastern Afghanistan. At least 37 people have been confirmed dead, but authorities fear the death toll will rise.

"It is a mountainous area with so much snow," said Shams Ul Rahman, the deputy governor of Badakhshan province, where the avalanche happened on Sunday night. "My concern is that many more people were killed."

People from a nearby village were the first to reach the site. They were joined on Tuesday by rescue workers from Darwaz district, who walked for two days to reach the remote area.

About 100 rescuers equipped only with shovels were digging through mounds of snow looking for anyone who might have survived, Rahman said. He said initial reports were that only three women and one child had survived the avalanche, as they had not been in the village of Dasty at the time.

Mohammad Daim Kakar, general director of the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said authorities were trying to find two helicopters to ferry blankets, food and medicine to the site, close to the Tajikistan border.

Deadly avalanches are common in Afghanistan's mountainous north in winter. In February 2010, one killed more than 170 people at the 3,800-metre (12,700ft) Salang Pass, which is the major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the capital to the north.